


would that be enough

by tiffanyachings



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Poldark - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, there should be a 'struggling with caring for another person' tag bc that's what happens here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 16:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11559054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiffanyachings/pseuds/tiffanyachings
Summary: There’s a new distance between them, one not as material as the English Channel, but just as unbearable to endure and seemingly impossible to cross.





	would that be enough

**Author's Note:**

> in an incredible turn of events, poldark (or more specifically s3's disappointing treatment of caroline) has achieved the impossible and made me write fanfic in my second language! this was written before 3x06 which is why it's not really canon compliant, but I hope you enjoy it anyway :)  
> many many thanks to Megan (dismiss-your-fearsx on tumblr) for proofreading and general encouragement!  
> 

The universe moves in mysterious ways, that much is clear to Caroline. It makes you nurse your dying uncle for so many months that you catch yourself half-wishing the grim reaper would just hurry up and then, against all odds and almost as though it wants to make it up to you, it returns you your long-lost husband, safe and…alright, not well, not exactly, but _alive,_ and anyway, a few months of dedicated care will surely restore him back to health. Perhaps all those hours spent by Uncle Ray’s bedside will have their use after all. In some twisted way, perhaps the universe always intended to prepare her for this. She can do this. He’ll be alright. _They’ll_ be alright. She’ll make sure of that.

He’s sitting next to her now, long-lost husband Dwight Enys, silently turning the pages of his book, the long fingers marked by scurvy. There is a countless number of things Caroline wants to talk to him about, but for the moment, she is content to sit with him in what she hopes is a companionable silence.

She isn't entirely sure. Dwight always had an introspective turn of mind, but she liked to think of herself as being rather accomplished at reading him. Now it feels like the book that is him is, well, not exactly closed, but written in a foreign tongue she can’t quite decipher. But that’s fine, Caroline thinks, she'll learn to, in time. They have time now. A lifetime together, to be precise. After living in the fear he’d never return to her alive for more than fourteen months, the thought of it alone almost takes her breath away.

xxx

 

Dwight protests when she proposes retiring to their beds despite his obvious exhaustion for reasons she can’t detect, but he doesn’t resist when Caroline pulls him up with concerning ease ( _'how thin he has become!',_ she thinks) and resigns himself to trailing behind her as she shows him to his new bedroom, curiously eying the house he has visited many times as a physician, but that has now become his home. Caroline makes halt in front of an old oak door opposite her own bedroom and turns around.

She looks at him long and fondly. He's a different man now, just like she is a different woman, and how could they not be after all that has happened? And yet - he may be quieter, his face may be thinner and she'll definitely need to ask someone to trim his hair with more care than Ross, but he's still _Dwight_. The same Dwight who patiently tended to Horace despite her in retrospect admittedly rather rude behaviour, who got her pulse racing with the mere touch of his hand on her cheek, who rather impudently and in a way she still can’t comprehend stole himself inside her heart without paying any heed to the myriad of defences she had so carefully erected around it over the years.

Caroline tenderly places a kiss on his forehead. "Good night, my love."

"Good night, Caroline," he says, but he does not meet her eyes.

Dwight has never quite mastered the art of disguising his real feelings in the way that she has and Caroline can tell something is wrong, though she cannot point her finger on what exactly. It’s something in his eyes…or maybe his tone, like there is something on his mind he's trying very hard not to say, so hard in fact that she can almost hear the words spilling over. She thinks for a second. “D'you know, my dear, I think I’ll stay with you tonight.”

Dwight shakes his head. “I can’t ask that of you."

"Nonsense!” She looks at him with a degree of seriousness quite unusual for her. “First of all, you can, you are absolutely entitled to and secondly, I shall do it whether you ask it of me or not!”

“People will talk,” he replies weakly.

Caroline scoffs. “As far as people know we’re an unmarried couple living together, that’s scandalous enough, surely sharing a bed won’t add much to it. And in any case, to hell with what people say, Dwight!”

He shifts and fumbles with a loose coat button. For a moment, she thinks he might reconsider, then he abruptly turns away. “You can’t.”

“Whyever not?”

“Caroline, please." Dwight's voice is quiet and almost pleading. She gives in.

"My room is on the opposite side of the corridor; wake me if anything's amiss.” He nods half-heartedly. “I mean it,” she adds sternly.

“I know you do.” His faint, wistful smile tells her plainly that it's a pointless offer, of course it is – he would never even _consider_ disturbing her sleep for his sake - but Caroline feels better for saying it.

 

xxx

 

There's a small part of her that isn't entirely convinced Dwight’s return is more than just a figment of her imagination when she wakes up in the morning, alone in her bed, and despite every reasonable fibre of her being telling her it’s impossible for a person to fabricate such a detailed memory, Caroline cannot help but sigh with relief when she finds him sitting in the parlour, flicking through the pages of one of her novels. She smiles to herself. Something about the sight of him in that red armchair feels very, very right. Like he always belonged there. Just like he belongs next to her in her bed, she adds mentally and decides to bring up the subject of their second wedding over breakfast.

"I reckon August would be quite lovely.”

“Caroline…”

“Or September,” she goes on and stirs more sugar into her tea. “October is fine as well, though it may rain.”

Dwight slowly shakes his head. “No…no, I don’t think I can…”      

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know.” Dwight sounds as infinitely tired as he looks. “I don’t know. Can we do this another time?”

Caroline can feel her face fall and quickly rearranges it in the brightest expression she can manage. “Of course,” she says a little too eagerly and attempts to swallow the disappointment rising in her throat. “Yes, definitely.”

Oh, obviously there is no need to set a wedding date already, and yet…It has been fifteen months since they stood in front of the altar for the first time. Many things have changed in those fifteen months. It would be rather reassuring to know that Dwight’s wish to be her husband is not one of them.

xxx

 

It takes Caroline a while to discover how fundamentally some things have altered in sixteen months.

Weeks later, she’ll wonder how long he would’ve been able to keep it quiet if she hadn’t gone on her way to the kitchen that night in want of some water for a thirsty and very persistently yapping Horace, just to stop in her tracks at the sound of faint whimpering coming from Dwight’s bedroom. Caroline can feel her chest tightening with worry. Horace forgotten, she carefully pushes the door open. It creaks obnoxiously loud; the cursed thing has probably never been oiled since Killewarren was first built. She peers into the room, barely illuminated by the flimsy moonlight. “Dwight?", she whispers.

A quiet, distressed moan comes from the vague direction of his bed as if in response and she hastens to his side, any caution suddenly overruled by cold fear. Panic grips her at the sight of his rapidly flinching eyes, his twitching limbs, and she scrambles on the mattress to shake him. “Dwight!”

He nearly leaps out of his skin at her touch and lashes out blindly, his elbow catching her ribs. Caroline can’t hide a wince. She stares at him, rigid with shock. His eyes, blue and wide-open and still haunted by whatever they’ve just seen, dart unfocused across the room before he notices her beside him. In the half-darkness, she can see his face crumble as realization dawns on him. Dwight sinks down onto the bed again, his body suddenly lax as butter, and curls up, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

“I’m fine,” Caroline says shakily and tries to squeeze his shoulder, but he flinches away. “I’m sorry I – I shouldn’t have – I didn’t...I didn’t know - I’m fine, I’m here. I'm here.” She brushes his cheek, hesitantly this time, and he lets her. Heart still pounding wildly, she slowly lowers herself to the bed, carefully tucks his head under her chin, takes his violently trembling hands in hers, holds them against her heart and tries not to think of the time when they were steady, so steady…

Dwight doesn’t speak, but he grips her hands tightly and doesn’t let them go. Alright, Caroline thinks as his breathing slows and the terror gives way to pure exhaustion. This is alright, no cause to panic. She can do this. She’ll hold on to him and that will be enough.

 

xxx

 

This is what Caroline tells herself, the simple truth she clings to as days turn into weeks and pull back the curtain to reveal the war’s full impact on her husband like a sick magic trick: that, against all odds, Dwight has returned, and that this is all that matters.

Except that he hasn’t, not really. There’s a new distance between them, one not as material as the English Channel, but just as unbearable to endure and seemingly impossible to cross. It’s absurd, really. He’s sitting right there, just across the table. Three feet at most. With a little effort, she could probably reach for his hand that’s resting next to his untouched plate. And yet the space between them seems much greater.

Caroline tries to fill it with words.

Needlessly to say, perhaps, she fails: there is no point in trying to fill a rift with something that lacks substance which, incidentally, seems to apply to anything that leaves her lips. It’s all meaningless, frivolous, flippant and yet she cannot stand the silence, cannot stop her tongue from telling him about Aunt Sarah's observations at the Godolphin's latest dinner party (“she tells me the curtains at their house in Oxford are the most _ghastly_ colour"). Sometimes Dwight seems to listen, sometimes he even tries to engage in a conversation (probably more because of politeness than actual curiosity; Sarah Pelham’s opinions on room furnishings even fail to capture her niece's interest) but seven out of ten times she finds him lost in an introspective haze, staring into his tea as though it holds the answer to…well, that’s precisely what she doesn’t know.

Caroline wishes she could ask him where his mind wanders while she is chattering on about exquisite china and wallpaper patterns, wishes she could find the right thing to say - because surely it must exist, that _right thing to say_ , how else could she know that her words are all wrong? - and she’s grasping for it, fervently searching for the magic words that’ll bring him _back_ , that’ll make it _stop_ , the stilted politeness and the unfamiliar distance and all of _this_ , but time and time again she comes up empty. And so she resigns herself to lulling him into what must surely be the normal humdrum of married life in the quiet hope that maybe, he can tune himself to it. Maybe, one day, it’ll be enough to drag him back from the places in his tea cup she cannot see and he will not talk about.

xxx

Caroline has never been of a religious turn of mind, but she can’t help but wonder if there’s some form of malicious higher spirit hell-bent on snatching her husband away from her as often as possible when Dwight casually announces he intends to go back to making his daily rounds over dinner barely a month after his return from France.

She nearly drops her spoon. “You cannot be serious! Look at yourself! I'd go and fetch a physician for you if I'd trust you to any of them.”

“I assure you, I am well enough. As opposed to my former patients, I imagine. I’ve abandoned them for so long – “

“And they'll be able to make do without you for a few more months,” Caroline interrupts him, a tone more harshly than intended.

Dwight stares at her, obviously displeased. “It’ll do me no good, sitting at home doing nothing.”

“It’ll do your body good.”

“But not my mind.”

She is silent at that.

Dwight still looks far from healthy, but already significantly better than at his return. Caroline feels a sense of pride watching the sores disappear and his cheeks become fuller. This has been her work. This is her helping him. And yet she is no longer as naive as to imagine that it'll be enough to physically restore him, that sleep and oranges will cure him from the chronic episodes of listlessness, from the nightmares and the way he flinches at the sound of the clock in the hall even though it sounds _nothing_ like the clicking of a musket. She doesn't know what will. Maybe Dwight does; who else should know better? 

Still, some quiet part of her retorts, it can't end well, allowing Dwight to play both physician and patient. In fact, Caroline would be happy to trust anyone to the care of Dr Dwight Enys except for Dwight himself, doubtlessly the only person in the world he would dare to neglect. But perhaps he is right. Staying at Killewarren all day long hasn’t helped him so far, why should she expect that to change? Shouldn't she at least allow him to try his self-prescription? Nevertheless, the idea of him catching some dreadful disease while he is still weak...

Torn between two minds, she gives him her neither approval nor her veto, only a worried look. That settles it. Dwight thanks her and kisses her and rides off the next morning to relentlessly pour the little energy he has into treating his patients as if to make up for the fellow prisoners he deserted, to wash his conscience clear of whatever failings he condemns himself for, to keep his mind off any memories he'd rather forget.

Caroline can’t tell whether it brings about any improvement. The only difference she detects is that he falls into bed more exhausted than he used to. Everything else stays the same.

xxx

After a while, it all turns into a cruel routine that begins to slowly but surely erode her spirit.

Not that she would ever openly acknowledge that. No, in some strange way, even admitting to herself that she is not well, not by the broadest definition of the word, feels self-centred now. Was she not living in the comfort of her home, surrounded by friends, while he was being beaten and starved for months, alone in Quimper’s prison camp? Is she not the one who can go about her day like she always has while Dwight is constantly battling an invisible illness that follows him wherever he goes?

Besides, how can she justify lamenting their present situation when really, it was all her fault in the first place? If only she hadn’t left for London…or perhaps if she had come back earlier as he had begged her to do in his letters, he wouldn’t have joined the Navy, wouldn’t have suffered the horrors of the prison camp, wouldn’t be soaking her nightshirt with his tears every other night. It's useless, of course, thinking about different paths she might have taken in the past, she knows that. All that matters now is to find a way to make it right. If only she could find it.

In truth, Caroline wishes she’d been given a map, or maybe a recipe for a cure, any kind of instruction she could follow instead of blindly stumbling through this new life, yearning to help but not knowing how to. That’s the worst of it, perhaps: not the weariness, not the way Dwight seems but a shadow of his former self, but the helplessness to do anything about it. It's the little demon lurking at the back of her mind nagging at her for not doing enough, for being such an utterly and completely _useless_ wife.

Dwight could tell her what he needs her to do if only he could bring himself to ask for help, Caroline is sure of that, but when she asks him one night, he just shakes his head and smiles softly. “All I need is some more time. Cures work like that, sometimes. We’ll just have to wait and be patient.”

 

xxx

 

Caroline Enys has many virtues. Patience is not one of them. But she has something else - an iron determination to see things right, and iron strength to endure whatever hardships life throws at her and a soft heart with love enough to believe there’s an end to this storm and that their marriage can weather it.

Those are the things she holds onto when she finds herself gently wrapping her arms around him and drying his tears at yet another ungodly hour in the morning.

“I’m sorry,” Dwight murmurs into her neck.

“Don’t you dare apologize again.”

“You shouldn’t have to be...have to be here...be doing this.”

“What, and abandon you to yourself?” Caroline laughs, but it rings false even to her own ears. “Well, my dear, I’m sorry to disappoint,” she says and pulls him a little closer, “but I’m not going anywhere.”

And maybe, in the end, that’s enough.

 

xxx

 

They are taking a turn through the gardens a couple of months later, after a failed attempt to explain Killewarren's accounts to Dwight (“You legally own this estate after all!”) quickly leads to an agreement that any financial matters are probably best left to Caroline.

“D’you know, it’s quite incomprehensible to me how my dear Uncle could even entertain the thought that someone who struggles with basic accounting would marry me for my fortune!”, says Caroline.

Dwight laughs. It’s a genuine and familiar sound and yet not the same the Dwight of old used to laugh - something about the anxiousness of the past years seems to magnify its warmth.

“How do you feel about October?” Dwight asks suddenly, pulling her from her thoughts. She raises her eyebrows in confusion. “For the wedding,” he adds.

Caroline feels her face light up with the sudden overwhelming rush of happiness that floods through her and she can’t stop herself from impulsively grasping his face and pulling it down to kiss his forehead, his cheek, his lips. Oh, it was never far from her thoughts, the quiet hope for a second wedding, despite her considerable efforts to relegate it to the back of her mind, and yet she never expected Dwight to bring it up again on his own. Perhaps some things don’t change, she thinks and wraps her arms around his neck. Not in fifteen months of separation, not in times of trials, not ever. Perhaps their love is one of them.

“October it is, then?”, he mumbles into her hair.

“October would be quite wonderful." Caroline pulls back and straightens up in an attempt to regain at least _some_ dignified composure.

"It's still a few months away, though," she adds.

Dwight squints at the sky. “Well, I dare say you’ll spend at least three months preparing the reception alone” - she crosses her arms in feigned offense at that – “and I must ask you to give me some more time to recover. Besides” – Dwight smiles and turns to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ears – “I believe you and I have become quite adept at waiting.”

 


End file.
